Offensive former Green Party candidate spews venom as he’s kicked to the curb:

[Potvin] added Sunday that if the Greens think getting rid of a candidate will squelch a controversy, then they don’t know what national politics is like.

Hmmm. Let’s think of some recent occasions where political parties have dismissed candidates, shall we?

Reaching way back to last month, I present Jean-Francois Plante, ADQ candidate for the Montreal-area riding of Deux-Montagnes. He slammed the Dec. 6 ceremony commerorating 14 young women who were murdered by a gunman at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989.

Not only did his party go on to become the official opposition for the province, but his last-minute replacement as candidate actually won her riding.

Or let’s look back at the federal election of January 2006 and the delightful Conservative candidate Derek Zaisman, tossed out mere weeks before the election as charges of smuggling emerged.

Although the party dismissed him as a candidate, it was too late to remove his name from the ballot and the yet-to-be-convicted crook came in a respectable third with just under 20% of the vote and just 450 votes behind the upright Liberal candidate. And, well, we all know whose party went on the form Canada’s eternally New Government.